Here’s what the impact of layoffs and site closures at Social Security could look like

Among the federal agencies that DOGE has its eyes on is the Social Security Administration. Less than three months into the current Trump administration, Social Security has been in the headlines a lot: Offices are expected to close. At least 7,000 workers are expected to be cut. Identification requirements have been changed, too. And a lot of those changes may mean limited access and additional delays to already protracted services.

Marketplace’s Nancy Marshall-Genzer recently spoke with two experts — Jack Smalligan who worked at the Office of Management and Budget for almost 30 years, focusing on Social Security, and Rich Couture, an attorney at the Social Security Administration and a union official — for their thoughts on how changes at Social Security could play out and impact the everyday Americans who rely on the agency. 

The following is a selection of extended interviews with Smalligan and Couture. Interviews took place separately and have been edited for clarity and length. 

On what things are currently like at the Social Security Administration

Rich Couture: Social Security is at a 50-year staffing low. We currently have 57,000 workers serving about 73 million Americans, compared to fiscal year 2010, where we had 67,000 workers serving 60 million Americans. And we know by estimates that about 10,000 Americans turn age 65 every day — that’s when they become Medicare-eligible — and we handle Medicare applications. And so we that’s a pretty good indicator for how much our prospective workload grows on a daily basis. We haven’t been funded the way that we needed to be funded in order to keep up with this explosion in beneficiary growth, and it’s had real impact on service delivery and on productivity.

On what would happen if the agency experienced layoffs

Couture: There’s significant risk of disruption that can be caused by the agency’s diminished ability to maintain its IT systems as a result of the loss of significant numbers of IT specialists. There are other components that provide budgetary, programmatic and other forms of support to the front lines. HR offices are likely to be impacted, which is going to affect what little hiring we’ve been able to do. It’s going to adversely impact the processing of a lot of these separations and retirements that we believe are going to be coming, as well as being able to provide mission support to frontline offices.

If we are losing thousands of workers from the frontlines, that is going to have an absolute impact — an absolute negative impact — upon wait times, upon processing times, upon the ability to schedule appointments for in-person services, in terms of wait times to get a disability hearing in front of a judge. All of our workloads on the frontlines will be impacted, and that will lead to further delays for Americans seeking benefits. And any delay in benefits is really a de facto benefit cut, because, again, all of the services that we provide have been paid for by the American people through their FICA contributions — not just the benefits, but the ability to access those benefits through prompt and timely service.

On layoffs and the ancient tech the SSA uses

Couture: As you’re probably aware, the Social Security Administration operates a very ancient (by computing standards) and fragile information technology infrastructure, with the mainframe itself operating off of COBOL, which is an antiquated programming language. It’s not widely taught in schools any longer, and the number of individuals in the national economy who have programming expertise dwindles by the day. And so Social Security hires a lot of these programmers in order to maintain this foundation, this mainframe system upon which the rest of SSA’s information technology infrastructure rests. And if we lose significant numbers of programmers who speak COBOL and are familiar with the mainframe and all of the other IT systems that rest upon the mainframe, Social Security is going to face major exposure to system disruption, if not system collapse. 

On impacts to services

Jack Smalligan: For individuals who experience an issue with third-party data that comes into Social Security, SSA staff now spend a lot of time resolving those issues. And those are misunderstandings; this is not fraud. With fewer SSA staff, it’s going to take much longer for people to resolve very innocent discrepancies in what’s been reported about them, whether it’s earnings or other types of income.

On what would happen if SSA facilities — such as field offices or permanent remote sites — were closed

Couture: [DOGE] has claimed publicly that most of the offices where the leases are being terminated are these permanent remote sites, some of which haven’t been used in more than a year, because we have pivoted to having more than 90% of our hearings be conducted virtually, rather than in person — by public choice, I should stress. So there hasn’t been as much of a need for in-person hearings, including at the satellite hearing locations. But the American people have a right to an in-person hearing, if they so choose. Closing these permanent remote sites is going to place a real burden, particularly on indigent claimants who want an in-person hearing, who will not be able to travel potentially hundreds of miles to the main hearing office to have their hearing in front of an administrative law judge. So there is an impact with the closure of these permanent remote sites.

Smalligan: There’s been really some rigorous research done by the academic community that’s looked at the effects of past field office closures, and what that analysis has shown, kind of comparing the geographic areas around a closure versus other comparable areas, is that you have basically people giving up on the program, essentially — meaning you have lower participation particularly in SSI, because it’s simply harder to access the benefit. And so on top of people potentially losing their benefits because of these kind of misunderstandings around income and earnings, you’re going to just have a discouraged population that’s just never going to apply.

On who would be most impacted

Smalligan: People with an issue with their eligibility status. And let me give an example: I worked with an individual receiving SSI who received a COVID stimulus check, and by law, that check is exempt from the SSI asset limit. But it’s hard for SSA to know that that source of income is from the stimulus check. So SSA sent her a letter basically ending her SSI benefit. And having lost your SSI benefit, she also lost your Medicaid benefit. And that misunderstanding is the kind of issue that a regional office could be working through or a field office could be working through. And before the Trump actions, those kinds of misunderstandings took months to resolve … With the downsizing and the office closures, it’s going to take much longer.

Someone claiming Social Security benefits, especially disability benefits, they are going to be the most acutely affected because they’re already waiting eight months for an initial decision, seven months for an initial appeal — and that’s with the current staffing levels. So if there’s substantial attrition because of all these actions, those wait times are going to increase into, kind of, years for people getting that initial review. And the Social Security actuaries modeled some scenarios that had backlogs for initial claims going from 1 million to 2 million if staffing is just allowed to stagnate. And here we’re actually looking at staffing declining by substantial amounts.

On what outside of Social Security benefits might be impacted

Smalligan: For low-income individuals, there’s a lot of rules around how the Medicare premium is done, and SSA has to calculate many of those things. And if there is an error made in that process, I mean you could have wrong payments going out and it could take a long time to resolve that. 

The COLA is clearly a pretty simple calculation, I mean, but the Medicare premium means there’s a higher premium for the highest-earning individuals. There’s also protections against having your Social Security benefit go down if the COLA is very modest, but the Medicare premium is very substantial … there’s provisions to basically hold those beneficiaries harmless so they don’t have a net reduction in their overall benefit after the Medicare premium. So depending your situation, you could have a higher or lower Medicare premium. And there’s been years when I was at OMB where Congress was still negotiating the budget, and if Congress changes the Medicare program in such a way to change Medicare spending, then the premium adjusts and everything ripples through. And so a change in overall Medicare policy ripples into the Medicare premium and how that impacts higher-wage and lower-earning individuals is complicated.